I welcome the Bill, and congratulate the Home Secretary on her introduction of it.
Let me begin by making a comment about the issue of forced marriage, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). My constituency contains a large Kashmiri Muslim community, and I believe that we should not tolerate forced marriages.
It is important to separate that issue from the issue of arranged marriages, a process in which people should be supported.
Today, as Members will know, the Home Affairs Committee published a report on the sexual exploitation of children, including street grooming. The Committee’s Chairman, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), said, in what I consider to have been very carefully chosen words,
“Children only have one chance at childhood, once that childhood is stolen by the horrific crime of sexual exploitation, it cannot be returned. Protection of these vulnerable children must be our first priority.”
I am extremely grateful for that timely report, because it puts into context an issue that I believe the Bill can begin to address.
In March this year, Shazad Rehman and Bilal Hussain were imprisoned for a total of 36 years for drugging and raping schoolgirls whom they had picked up on the streets of Keighley. The two men committed some of their hideous offences, unchallenged, in local hotels. More recently, in May, seven men were found guilty at the Old Bailey of 43 charges relating to six victims aged between 11 and 15. The men plied their victims with drink and class A drugs, took them to guesthouses and bed-and-breakfast establishments, and—again, unchallenged —raped and tortured those children.